The Silver Anniversary Murder (4 page)

“That’s the way I’m thinking.”

“Joe, has a police artist made a sketch of the dead woman’s face?”

“In fact he has. I just got it a few minutes ago. I’ll fax it to Jack and you’ll have it tonight. And we’ll use it in our canvass.”

“I’d like to try the nail establishments in the area. You said she’d had a fresh manicure when she died.”

“Right. And I hear tell that women confide in their hairdressers and manicurists, so maybe the victim let something slip.”

If the victim was Holly Mitchell, I thought that was a long shot. These were careful people, but perhaps the desire to confide had overcome Holly’s caution while she watched her nails redden. It was worth a try.

Jack came home with a couple of sketches, one of the face and one of the whole person. I laid them side by side on top of the
Times
in my lap and studied them. There were handwritten notes, too, that the eyes were brown, the height about five-four, the weight one hundred twenty to one hundred twenty-five. This was an estimate, as a fair amount of decomposition had occurred in the time the body had been secluded near the creek.

“Looks like you’re drawing a blank,” Jack said, putting down his sections of the
Times
.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.” I noticed the artist had drawn the full-length sketch with a skirt. She looked like a woman ready to go to work. All that was missing was her handbag and perhaps a fashionable briefcase.

“See what the nail places have to say.”

“What if she worked in New York and had her nails done on her lunch hour?”

“Always possible. Then that’s just bad luck. Let’s not anticipate it.”

He was right, but I was disappointed. Something in me had been sure I would recognize the woman, but she was a stranger to me, a stranger who was dead of mysterious causes, none of them a gunshot wound.

“You look troubled.”

“I am. I wonder if this woman was even the one I talked to on the phone. I wonder if the sound I heard was a gunshot. I really wonder what this is all about.”

Jack got up and went to the kitchen to get seconds of coffee. “Keep digging. Between the two of you, you’ll come up with something.”

4

My theory was that a woman trying to keep her identity a secret would not go to the nearest manicurist or hairdresser—or bank, for that matter. She would be in danger of having a neighbor walk in, recognize her, and want to chat. After I noted all the nail places in Oakwood and surrounding towns, I drew a map and plotted them, deciding to leave the nearest for last. I had a feeling the police would work in reverse, and if I was lucky, I would come up with something before they did.

On Saturday morning I left father and son to do their weekend thing together and set out to visit nail shops. The first one on the list was several miles from the apartment building where the fictitious Mitchells had lived. I explained my mission to the receptionist, a young woman with nails that were long and multicolored. I would have been afraid to shake hands with her.

She didn’t recognize the face in the sketch but generously invited me to talk to the five manicurists, all of whom were hard at work. One after the other, they shook their heads. I took the opportunity to ask their clients as well, on the chance that one of them had seen Holly in another location or, better still, had known her personally. No luck.

This wasn’t the first time I had made these kinds of inquiries, and I knew better than to feel defeated so early. I crossed off the name of the establishment and drove to the second on the list. The names themselves were inventive. Several called themselves some kind of spa. The one I was headed for was called Shimmer.

Shimmer it might, but no one there recognized Holly either.

Number three was Nails R Art. The mirrored front window prevented a view inside but an oval section in the door was transparent glass, facilitating safe entries and exits.

Inside, it was bustling. The receptionist wore a smock with women’s hands painted on it, each set of nails done differently. Her own, by contrast, were covered with a colorless gloss. I rather liked it.

I introduced myself and showed her the sketch. She looked at it carefully, then focused again on me. “I haven’t seen her for about a month.”

“But you know her?”

“Oh yeah. She came in every week or two. She was Ronda’s client.” She pointed to her left. “That’s Ronda over there.”

“What’s this woman’s name?” I asked.

“Rosette something. Wait a minute.” She turned back several pages of her appointment book. “Parker. Rosette Parker.”

“Is she married?”

“I think so. Ronda would know. She sees her hands all the time.”

“When will Ronda be free?”

She looked at her watch. “Five minutes. Tell her you want to talk to her. She has a little time before her next appointment. There was a cancellation this morning.”

Ronda confirmed she would be free soon and told me to sit and make myself comfortable. I did as she suggested, finding a new issue of
Time
magazine on the rack. I had hardly gone through the table of contents when Ronda called me to follow her. We went downstairs to a basement kitchen and break room. A small microwave sat on a counter near the refrigerator. All the comforts of home.

I explained what had happened without being too explicit. When I said a body had been found, Rondo drew in her breath and opened her eyes wide. I asked her to look at the sketch, and she quickly identified the face as belonging to Rosette Parker.

“How long has she been your client?” I asked.

“About two years. Maybe not that long. Could I look at that again?”

I handed her the sketch, which seemed to mesmerize her. “Was she married?”

“I’m pretty sure she was. She wore a thin diamond band on her left hand, very nice diamonds.”

“Did she ever talk about her husband?”

“She never talked about anything personal. She was pleasant and she tipped well and we talked, but I never heard her say much about her private life.”

“What about children?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I assumed she had them because she was married and the right age, but I don’t think she ever mentioned them. She worked, I know that.”

“Do you know where?”

“Uh, maybe White Plains.” White Plains is a metropolitan center northeast of New York City, a great deal smaller than New York but the largest city in the area. It has department stores and the expected malls, buildings full of business offices, and too much traffic.

“Did you ever see her car?”

“I don’t know. She parked outside but I can’t say I ever—wait a minute. I think I once saw her get into a maroon SUV-type car.”

That could be the one the Mitchells’ neighbors had seen filled with furniture a few weeks ago. “I don’t suppose you noticed a license plate,” I said with no hope that she had.

She smiled. “Sorry. Uh, could I ask you something? When did Mrs. Parker die? The last time I saw her she seemed fine.”

“She died a few weeks ago. When was the last time you saw her?”

She calculated. “Three weeks ago? Four? It’ll be in the book at the desk.”

“Did she tell you what kind of work she did?”

“I think it was something in public relations. She saw clients, I know that. Every so often she’d tell me a little story about one of them, something funny that happened. One woman locked her purse in her car along with the key, and Mrs. Parker gave her lunch money and called the police to help her break into her car.”

“Did she ever recommend anyone to be your client?”

“Never. I’m sure of that.”

I wasn’t surprised. When you’re using two names, you have to be very careful not to entangle your personas. “Was she a regular?”

“Pretty regular. Sometimes she had to go out of town and she couldn’t come in.”

“Does the shop have her phone number?”

“They must. We have to be able to call in case there’s bad weather and I can’t get in or I’m sick or something like that. They should have it at the desk.”

“Anything else you can tell me, Ronda?”

“She was a nice woman. I’m sorry she’s dead. Now I know why she missed her last appointment.”

We went back upstairs—it was almost time for Ronda’s next appointment—and Ronda took the full-length sketch from me. At her station, she pulled over a bottle of bright pink polish, opened it, removed the excess liquid from the brush, and dabbed it over the fingertips on the sketch. They were hardly more than little circles, but they brightened up the otherwise black-and-white picture. She handed it to me carefully, screwed the cap back in the bottle, and pushed it to its accustomed space.

On my way out, I stopped at the desk and asked for the date of Mrs. Parker’s last appointment and for her phone number. The phone number was on file in their computer; it was the same number as the phone in the apartment. That, at least, established the dead woman, whatever her name might have been, had lived in that apartment. The last time she’d seen Ronda was the day before I got the phone call. I headed home.

“Good work,” Jack said.

“What kind of work did you do, Mommy?” Eddie asked. The two of them were preparing vegetables for our dinner. Jack takes over the cooking on weekends, mostly because he enjoys it but also, I’m sure, because the quality of what he cooks is so far superior to what I cook.

“It wasn’t really work, honey. I was looking for someone and I found her. Can I have a carrot stick?”

He handed me one and I crunched it. “Mm. This is sweet.”

“Daddy is going to play baseball with me after lunch.”

“I guess it’s that season. Don’t break any windows, you guys.”

Eddie laughed. I wasn’t sure what was so funny.

Jack called Joe Fox after lunch, and when he was sure Joe didn’t mind being bothered on a Saturday, he gave me the phone.

“I found the manicurist,” I said.

“Well, you’re one giant step ahead of my cops. They reported that they’ve covered all the ones in Oakwood and have branched out to neighboring towns.”

I told him I had started with neighboring towns and why.

“Good thinking. What do you have?”

I gave it to him quickly, ending with the phone number.

“So the victim lived there. And she must have had a husband or significant other because the building manager had his name and probably his signature on the lease. But who knows what name they kept their money under. And where’s the husband?”

“I had to leave a few things for you, Joe,” I said.

“Right. If you show us up, there’ll be hell to pay. Well, the ME was able to lift fingerprints from the body. We’ll be able to compare them with those we found in the apartment. I guess we’d better look for an account for Rosette Parker in the local banks, not that we have any reason to believe she stopped with two names. Anyway, it’s too late today. We’ll have to wait for Monday. But you’ve made a good start, Mrs. Brooks. If you’re looking for a job, I’ll be glad to recommend you to the county.”

I admit to feeling flattered. I filled in what I had left out initially, that Ronda thought Rosette might have worked in White Plains, that she said nothing about her family but wore a diamond ring that could have been a wedding band.

“Sounds like Holly/Rosette was a careful person. When we have the prints, we’ll see if she has a record.”

“And a name she was born with.”

“That, too. I’d especially like to know if there’s a family, either on her side or her husband’s. And it would be nice to know where he disappeared to.”

“A lot of things we don’t know,” I said. “I’ll follow my intuition, Joe, and try to keep from getting underfoot.”

“So far that’s not a problem. I have to say, though, I didn’t expect you to lose that dollar quite so fast.”

“Nor did I.” It still rankled a bit. “Any labels in her clothes, Joe?”

“Brand names but no store labels. I’m told the labels are in the more-than-moderate range. Someone in that family must have made money—and they must have kept it somewhere. Tell me again about the last appointment with the manicurist. You said that was the day before the woman called you?”

“Yes. Rosette had a morning appointment. The woman called me the next day in the afternoon, a little after lunch, I think. Palermo should have that in the file.”

“He should. You’re right.” I wasn’t sure whether he was being sarcastic or merely stating a fact. “Finding them through the bank isn’t going to be easy. With ATMs, people can withdraw and deposit money without personal contact except for the first time, when they open the account. And who’ll remember them from years ago?”

“But don’t you think they’d have had to use Mitchell as their name? The statements had to be sent to their apartment, and it was rented under that name.”

“Could’ve used a box number.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And we still don’t know if she’s the woman who called you, Mrs. Brooks. Just because she lived in that apartment doesn’t mean she made the call.”

“Well, I guess there should be blood work coming in soon. That may answer some questions.”

“There will, and I will share it with you. Don’t give up while you’re getting results.”

I left it there for the weekend but I didn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve found that even when I’m not actively involved, my mind keeps working and tosses me ideas when I least expect them. We now knew that Holly Mitchell and Rosette Parker were the same person, but that would only be useful if we could find other places where those names had been used. It certainly sounded as though Holly/Rosette was keeping a low profile, but I couldn’t imagine why. What I thought of was the complications of collecting insurance and eventually Social Security without a consistent name. If Holly worked for ten years and Rosette worked for another ten, that didn’t add up to twenty years of benefits. And if she had a job and wore fairly expensive clothes, a lot of people had to know her under one name. She had to have picture ID to fly to business meetings, although I assumed an old driver’s license would suffice. It had for me before I acquired my first passport last year to take the trip to Israel when Jack got a two-week assignment in Jerusalem.

Joe Fox had mentioned that the victim might have a record, which they would discover when her fingerprints were run. That could account for her not wanting employers and landlords to know her real name. Of course, it might have been her husband who had been incarcerated, and we knew nothing about him. It was dizzying.

But other explanations could account for her use of several personas. Topping my list was the possibility that she was hiding from someone, running away from someone who was hunting for her. One hears frequently about the government giving mobsters and their families new identities and homes in locations distant from their original homes. Were Rosette and her husband in that situation? Again, the fingerprints should provide an answer, unless the files were sealed even to the police.

I was starting to think she could not possibly have children. I couldn’t imagine raising a child who went to school with one name and took piano lessons with another. Thinking about this became exhausting, and I was glad I would have Sunday off to think about other, pleasanter things.

My cousin Gene, who is mentally retarded, lives in a home for adults. When my aunt was alive, she had to get herself to the neighboring town to visit him, a difficult task after my uncle died, as she never learned to drive. But when I moved into her house a few months after her death, Greenwillow, the residence, also moved to Oakwood. I am a frequent visitor there, often with Eddie, who plays with Gene as though they are equals. Gene is very gentle with Eddie and I know they love each other. The day may come when Gene is in Eddie’s care, and I want their relationship to remain solid and close.

On that Sunday, all four of us attended mass together and then Gene came home with us for Sunday dinner. In the afternoon we all played baseball in the backyard. I’m never very clear on the rules of the game or how many teams we are, so I let Jack take care of that part. Then we drove Gene back to Greenwillow.

It was a tiring day, and Eddie went to bed early, keeping the baseball mitt on his night table the way I used to keep a favorite doll near me when I slept. Gender really seems to mean something, even early in life.